Don’t BOO Safety

This week is one the favorite times of year of my son..… HALLOWEEN! The haul of candy aside, he loves getting to wear his new costume (this year it’s Jack Skellington from A Nightmare before Christmas), walking through the neighborhood to see all of the decorations, and enjoying the other costumes.

We get a lot of traffic in our neighborhood, with 6 streets running parallel and it’s all flat. As a result of the high traffic, some of our neighbors treat this as a time to compete and go all out with the decorations. So not to be outdone, one of them has decided to set up a mini haunted maze in their backyard – complete with smoke machines, strobe lights, bales of hay, cobwebs, spiders, skeletons, headstones and even a working guillotine! The kids are going to enter from the side yard and once they work their way through the maze, they pull on the guillotine’s rope to reveal the (skull) bucket of candy! Pretty ingenious and WAY more work than I would have done, but I am sure it will be a huge hit!

As they were showing me their “invention”, I started to wonder how safe this was going to be and could only imagine that some parents are going to be like me, a little concerned. They assured me that everything was going to be fine, they had our Township office inspect the maze and were able to secure a permit. Since the Township is aware that the neighborhood draws a lot of visitors, they even agreed to have volunteer firefighters assist with the operation and provide a safe(r) attraction.

Safety should also be a primary concern when implementing compressed air applications in your workplace. By using open ended pipe or tubing, you are creating an unsafe work environment, risking serious injury due to high pressure and extended exposure to extreme noise levels. All of EXAIR’s Intelligent Compressed Air Products have been designed and engineered to meet or exceed OSHA Standard 1910.242(b) for 30 psi dead end pressure and OSHA Standard 29 CFR 1910.95(a) for allowable noise exposure.

OSHA Standard 1910.242(b):
Compressed air used for cleaning. Compressed air shall not be used for cleaning purposes except where reduced to less than 30 p.s.i. and then only with effective chip guarding and personal protective equipment.